November 12, 1999
Day 21 Rd 60 before Junin del los Andes: Changing road surface
Free Camping
Today's ride is best described as changing road surfaces.
The coarse gravel continues to shake us up, but soon the road steepens, muscles scram and Rachel has to get off and push the bike up. Patrick continues making his way up riding.
Soon, the road steepens even more, continuous and we both struggle up the valley. We see beautiful peaks, farms and a boy with his farther play soccer in the road. We the Chile Immigration office.
The National Park Service employee tells us it's 3km more straight up then flattens out. We continue to have to push/pull ourselves and the bikes up, up, straight up. We reach the lake, eat, dry the tent and finally we reach the summit.
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After immigration check in and we ride into Argentina and the hope of a better road surface.
We get awesome views of Volcan Lanin and a tailwind pushing us first over brown hardened surface, suddenly changing to black volcanic silt that looks solid but is not. We ride over the silt with the bikes sinking in and then we slide and the wheels abruptly stop. Then back onto the gray cobblestone like surface that turns into loose gravel and the bike slide.
The wind pushing from behind, the road stopping us in front.
Fences line the road indicating private property no admittance. Our water is low. One lone road sign offers a place to lean the bikes so we can take a break and eat, trying to keep the blowing sand out of the food.
We slowly keep going.
It has taken us 6 hours to do 20 kms from camp to summit. New we look at needing to do 60 kms to Junin de los Andes. We drop down the valley with beautiful views of the Volcano, through groves of Monkey Puzzle trees. Our bodies ache. The wind keeps pushing us. At 1830, we discuss our options. Continue onto town arriving late, look for water to filter and cook supper, continue on, find a place to camp and eat a cold dinner.
The fences at the side of the road scream "there's no place to camp you must continue on". We can still see the volcano. We cross a bridge, and around the corner there is a fishing access are--a place to camp!
Relief.
We feel beat up. Arms don't usually ache from cycle touring, today the whole body aches. We camp. We can see the volcano through the trees back up the valley from which we came.
So many different surfaces on the road!
Today's ride: 61 km (38 miles)
Total: 938 km (582 miles)
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